


Stardust to Stardust

by Lionescence



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, The White Lion - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:07:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26603479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lionescence/pseuds/Lionescence
Summary: Standing at the rift, at the crack in the heart of the universe, it is not Allura who steps forward.And Shiro is left alone, for ten years.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 247
Collections: Across Realities





	Stardust to Stardust

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in the Sheith Across Realities zine, which was an utter joy and an honour to be a part of. 
> 
> I wasn't going to write this fic. But some of the AR team were spitballing in the chatroom and I said, "Guys, what if..."
> 
> And what I got back was, "Oh my god, Ali, you *have* to write this."
> 
> So here it is. I hope you enjoy it.

Honerva is dead. The First Paladins are gone.

And the White Lion stands before them.

“This is a wound beyond all alchemy,” he says, voice rumbling through their minds like thunder. Shiro and the Paladins all stand staring at the rift, the crack in the heart of the universe. “It is why we have Voltron. Its very existence transcends realities; so too, its power. The five Lions and I, we may well have the power to stop this. But we require a living conduit. We are nothing without a means to be cast, silent without a voice to sing us out into the void.”

Shiro tenses as Lance visibly tightens his hold on Allura’s hand, even as her body language shifts towards the White Lion, as if making ready to go. “A heart that beats, a soul that burns.”

No one moves. No one dares look at one another.

The White Lion bows his mighty head. “Come, Keith. It is time.”

And Keith steps forward, certain and easy. There is something… tranquil, to him. A smile that shouldn’t be there, a light in his eyes.

Suddenly it’s all Shiro can see: Keith, beautiful and precious. He doesn’t see Pidge barrelling into Keith, hugging him with all her ferocity and more. He barely hears Keith tell them all that he’d known, had always known: he saw his choice within the Quantum Abyss and made his peace with it, has already said his goodbyes to Krolia, Romelle, and Kosmo. Shiro doesn’t — can’t — acknowledge Keith telling Pidge, Lance, Hunk that their families need them, telling Allura that Coran and the Alteans need her.

All Shiro sees is his constant failure. Since waking, since returning to Earth, he’s failed Keith. Their last night on Earth. His constant busyness keeping him away when he used to make time, all the time. Zethrid’s grudge that nearly got Keith killed due to his own inaction. All along, Shiro assumed he had time, that when all this was done, he would make things right. He would give Keith everything he deserved and more.

_“No!”_

He throws himself at Keith’s feet, on his knees, his hands on Keith’s waist. Keith almost staggers back, but doesn’t — and isn’t that just how it’s always been, that Keith would never fall, not when it comes to him — when Shiro holds on to him with everything he has. “No, Keith, please. Please. I’m sorry. I’m _sorry_ , it should be _me_. Let _me_ go. You can’t. _You can’t._ ”

Shiro has never known desperation like this, and he’s never known Keith to be this calm, this quiet. His tears spill over when Keith reaches down, places his hands on Shiro’s shoulders, rubbing gently. His smile never wavers. “Shiro. All I’ve ever wanted for you was peace. Everything I’ve ever done is so you’d know peace. You can have that now.”

But he shakes his head, clinging harder, bruising. “What peace is there for me if you’re not here? Keith, please —” _I’ll do better_ , he wants to say. _I’ll give you all the time in the world. I’ll look after you. I’ll show you how much you mean to me. Please._

Keith only smiles, a sad, melancholic thing that shouldn’t suit him, but it makes him seem so ethereal. “I promised you, Shiro. As many times as it takes. And, you know, maybe they were right: I’m selfish. This will save the universe, but you’re _my_ universe. So, I guess, this way…”

He doesn’t finish. Or maybe he can’t. Shiro’s head and heart are a whirlwind of _please_ and _no_ and he chokes when he feels Keith’s hands slide up his neck, curving against his jaw, cupping his cheeks. Something in him cleaves apart when he feels something he’s only ever dreamed of: Keith’s lips, soft, a little chapped, so full of something unnameable, brushing against the crown of his head. There is a breath, and Shiro feels like he’s been anointed by the purest sunshine, warmth dribbling from the top of his head down his spine, right to his knees and the tips of his fingers and toes.

“Live well, Takashi. For me.”

And then Keith is pulling away, one step back, two, his hands leaving him, his fingertips brushing his skin for what feels like the last time.

“Keith.”

The Red Paladin turns on his heel, and Shiro realizes that there is no more time. Allura, Lance, Pidge, and Hunk are behind him, hugging each other and weeping openly, whispering and murmuring _goodbye_ and _we love you_ and _we’ll miss you_ and it’s just not that simple. Not for Shiro. He wants to get up, reach out, scream, and stop Keith from going.

Keith is walking beside the White Lion, and little by little they are swallowed by the light. Then Keith turns, walks backwards, and he is almost nothing but a silhouette, except Shiro can still see the light in his eyes — the tears — and that smile like a lightning strike. “I’ll find you, Takashi,” he says, an impossible promise from an impossible heart. “I will always find you.”

He whirls around again, into the light.

Shiro doesn’t know if the crack he hears is the rift sealing itself once more, or his soul breaking in two.

But the rift is gone, and so is Keith. So perhaps, it makes no difference to him at all.

When Shiro speaks at the memorial, he is a shell. He says the words that he’d written the night before, but there is no passion, no reassurance. The world will rebuild, families and friends will come together once more, and the Galactic Coalition will continue to grow and evolve, but none of those things are for him. He knows Garrison brass aren’t happy with his performance, but he doesn’t care what they think anymore. He is grieving and he refuses to let anyone tell him not to.

Rather than join the celebrations, or find the other Paladins and Coran, Shiro finds himself back at the war memorial, standing in front of Adam’s name. He lays a small bouquet of lilies there, sighs.

“I let him go, Adam,” he says, softly even though there is no one else to hear him. “I’m so stupid. I wish… I wish you were here so you could kick my ass.”

The Garrison reveals a monument later that same day. They at least had the courtesy to consult with Allura, the Paladins, and himself. They called in Krolia and Kolivan. Their misplaced nobility even stretched so far as to lend the design to New Altea and New Daibazaal so they could do the same.

Both declined.

In a small courtyard, an eight-foot replica of Keith’s bayard in its sword form is set in a rock, like a thing out of a legend, waiting for a chosen one to pull it free and claim their destiny. The marble is polished so that the stone shines like steel, red enamel accenting it in all the right places. In its centre is an oval stone set with the symbol of the Blade of Marmora. Below the sculpture, a brass plaque reads:

_Child of Earth. Son of the Stars. Heart of the Universe._

Shiro visits it sometimes, when his heart hurts more than tears can bear. He never, ever leaves flowers.

Shiro is an Admiral without a ship. The Garrison and the Coalition have regular sparring matches trying to determine who the IGF-Atlas truly belongs to, who she should rightly represent. The debacle leaves Shiro restless and unmoored, stalking around the Garrison like a moody panther. Everyone seems to forget that Atlas refuses to fly without him at the helm, and he has no real desire to be around when they figure it out.

He finds an unlikely escape when Iverson comes to his office one afternoon, bearing a medium-sized box. He is wordless at first, placing the box in front of Shiro, who stares at it until Iverson says, “Commander Kogane left these to you.”

‘These’ turn out to be Keith’s Marmora blade, secure in its weathered sheath, the keys to his bright red hoverbike, and a sheaf of papers: a will, and the deed to the piece of land where the Kogane home once stood. Each document bears Keith’s tidy signature, but nothing else. No letter, no note.

Iverson leaves him with the box, and Shiro gets a soft ping on his tablet, indicating that Veronica has cancelled all his meetings for the rest of the day and the day after, and set his office and communications to Do Not Disturb. He’s angry at her meddling, but also so very grateful; he sobs into his folded arms on the desk, the keys biting into his flesh palm, and once his tears run dry, he takes the box, finds the hoverbike in the hangar, and drives.

The next day, he makes a call: “Pidge. I need a favour.”

By the end of the week, Pidge finds aerial photographs, topographical maps, geological surveys, and a set of blueprints. Together, they plan and design. By the end of the month, Shiro secures all the permissions he requires, and work begins.

He lets them pour the foundations, lets them drill for the water source and lay the pipes, lay the cables for power. But everything else, he does himself. Let the higher-ups and the bigwigs fight over him. He doesn’t need to be there. The Atlas won’t go anywhere without him. He moves out into the shack and spends his days in quiet exertion and meditation, rebuilding a home that was once full of love and promise and happiness.

Maybe if he keeps going, maybe if he lives well, he’ll find the peace that Keith so selflessly gifted him.

Shiro is fitting the skylight when Krolia rides up on a Garrison-issue hoverbike. When he comes down to meet her, she has her sunglasses pushed up into her hair, expression unreadable as she takes in the house she once knew.

“It’s almost as I remember it, Shiro.”

He invites her in, makes her tea while she admires his work. Everything is more solid, better insulated, modern but littered with comforts: upstairs is the master bedroom with en suite, a second bedroom and separate bathroom, a study; the kitchen and living area is open plan with a quiet reading nook built into the southern side. So much of it is as though Keith lived there, too. The Paladins had all come together to collect bits and pieces that they know Keith would have liked: a collection of books, posters of star maps, blankets and oversized cushions. It is close to becoming a home now, if only a home for half a heart.

Shiro dreams of finding Keith dozing in the reading nook, in the sun, book forgotten in his lap, as he so often did back on the Castle.

“I have something for you,” Krolia says, when they’re halfway through their tea. From her jacket she pulls out a small black box, its velvet dull and a little worse for wear. “Keith wanted you to have it.”

With shaking hands, Shiro flicks the box open, and nestled inside is a bright metal ring on a silver chain.

Krolia swallows, then speaks. “It belonged to his father. We never married, he and I, but he… I think he felt the need for a token, a sign that he belonged to me.”

Shiro pulls the ring out, the weight of it surprising him. Keith’s father was a firefighter, so the metal must be titanium or tungsten for how it shines so beautifully in the weak sunlight pouring into the room. Light catches the ring at an angle, and there Shiro finds an inscription on the inside of the band.

_My heart is with the stars._

He thinks of Keith’s father, forever scanning the sky while his son sleeps, wondering if his lover was safe, alive, well. He thinks of his own nights sitting on the roof, telling the stars about his day, about how much he misses Keith, how much he loves him.

Every time he is certain he has no tears left, he is proven wrong. He breaks, and Krolia is there to hold him until the crying is done and the sun has long gone down.

He tries on the ring once, and only once. It’s a perfect fit. But it stays on its chain around his neck, and he never takes it off.

“I think I dreamt of him last night,” Allura tells him as her newborn daughter dozes gently in her arms. She doesn’t need to say who she means. Lance is by the window, listening, the kind of pride in his eyes only a new father could have, but his smile is quiet and forlorn.

“You did?”

“Yes. He objected to us wanting to name a son after him.” Allura giggles, her expression fond.

Shiro finds himself chuckling, too. “He would. He’d hate that.”

“Well,” she allows with a shrug. “We have little Melenor now. Perhaps the next one.”

But the next one is a daughter, too. As is the third. And sometimes Shiro wonders if the stars can laugh.

It’s February 29th, and only the other Paladins consider it his thirty-sixth birthday. The rest of the planet reads him as forty, but space-time is strange and only he gets to say how old he thinks he is.

Keith has been gone for almost ten years. Shiro still occasionally visits Keith’s memorial, but he and Krolia visit Keith’s father together twice a year: on his father’s birthday, and on Keith’s. The Atlas has been rightfully his for half a decade, and while he fulfils his dream of travelling the stars, he is never away from the homestead for long. He always makes sure to be home for their birthdays, as well as Christmas.

It’s a strange and lonely existence, but there is some peace to it, no matter how his heart aches.

At twenty to midnight, Shiro pours himself one last drink, to toast the end of his leap year birthday. He sips it slowly, standing at his back porch, picking out constellations in the sky.

And then it happens.

Something larger than a falling star streaks across the sky, a cloak of violet wreathing its fire-white heart. Shiro’s heart hammers in his chest because he knows that shade of violet, and it can’t be, it can’t —

He set his glass down and runs. Runs as fast as he can, until he’s not imagining the star slowing down, until it comes to a stop ahead of him, suspended in the air. It waits for him, waits for him to reach out, and it releases its precious cargo.

The armour is battered, covered in scrapes and scuffs. There are small cuts and tears in the bodysuit. His hair is a cascade of night black, longer than he’s ever known it to be. But he is as beautiful as ever, and he is _alive_ , and Shiro holds out his arms, smiling through his tears.

His hands slide up a solid ribcage, and Shiro’s first thought is that it’s _warm_ and _real_ and expanding and contracting with each breath. As the body descends — and the weight of it is so, so grounding — his hands move back to strong shoulders, pulling in and holding close. He feels lips reclaiming the kiss left upon his crown ten years ago, and Shiro laughs, raising his eyes so he could look, so he could _see_.

Keith is there. Keith is smiling like the sun, his eyes holding all the stars in the sky and all the love in the world.

“Keith. You’re home.”

“Takashi,” and it’s the sweetest sound in existence, “I will always find you.”


End file.
